Personally, I don’t think this should be limited to the debug version of the Flash Player, as I do think it would be beneficial to get bugs from the general public outside of the Flash community. Especially since the general public are likely running slower and less fine tuned computers. Better web companies QA their applications on older computers, but it’s been my experience that they are generally in the minority and it’s not something done nearly enough. Even then few companies can cover the huge range of configurations that is only growing these days as Flash gets on more mobile devices.

Also I think it’s the more technically inclined who will likely take the time to create an account and file a bug. That doesn’t mean there won’t be more noise from bugs from the public, but I think it would be worth it for bugs that might not have been caught normally.

But would it not be better to have that option available only for the Debug version of the player? Automatic crash reporting is one thing (which I commented on in a a related post), but if every ‘lay’ user were to have the ability to post directly to the Adobe bugbase, the quality of bug reports and comments might get quite diluted with copies and “mee too” posts, since most users would not have the desire nor discipline to first search whether there may already be a relevant bug report for their issue.

Which of course, someone from Adobe must spend considerable time combing through. Given Adobe’s history of attention to bug requests, my fear is that even less attention would get paid to fixing bugs and more time spent managing the bug system.

Which raises an interesting question: is Adobe’s recent move to open up the bugbase to non-registered users just a PR move in response to recent criticism at the perceived stability of the Flash Player, or a genuine attempt at improving their reporting statistics? Only time will tell.